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1.0 out of 5 stars
Created From Tired Themes Used In Countless Other Less Than Pleasing "Erotic Thrillers"., October 19, 2005
This review is from: Final Embrace [VHS] (VHS Tape)
With this Roger Corman produced "erotic thriller", some talented personnel are on board, particularly as members of the crew, but a silly script handily jettisons any chance this work may have had to climb above the standard of its scarcely engrossing genre, with additional shortcomings being poor acting and desultory direction. The movie opens, as may be expected, with the first of several softcore love scenes, this one connecting Holly Parish, or "Candy Vale" (Nancy Valen), a pop singer, and her lover, police detective Kyle Lambton (Robert Rusler), assigned to protect her following death threats, and obviously paying specially close attention to his duty, with the pair's amourous activity a shallow substitute for development of characterization, in any event here but sketchy. After the culmination of their lovemaking, Holly informs Kyle that he has meant little to her other than for his basic masculine virtues, and the lovelorn lawman exits in a huff, whereupon his charge is promptly murdered in her home, an act that serves to emphasize probable dereliction of duty on the part of her affectionate bodyguard. An obvious suspect for the slaying is the anonymous author of the threats, a Scripture babbling stalker fan of Holly Vale, who has named himself "John/Peter", but as Kyle and his senior detective partner, played by Dick Van Patten, investigate the facts relating to the homicide, they discern that others may have benefited from the permanent sealing of the singer's lips, among them an aspiring successor to Vale, Jeri Page (Linda Doná), whose modest warbling skills are plainly quite as undernourished as those of the late vocalist. A previously unknown to the world and ostensibly shy identical twin sister of Holly, Laurel Parish (naturally also portrayed by Valen), enters the story only to discover that, whereas she is the only living relative of the deceased, a scheme is afoot by Jeri along with her and Holly's video director to defraud the twin of her due proceeds from Vale's songs, while a record company executive is also somehow engaged in the fiscal plotting, with all together forming ingredients to elicit interest from the concerned detectives. As will be surprising to only the most sluggish of viewers, Laurel then assumes the persona of her expired sibling, donning the latter's wig and so forth, causing comically reestablished warm responses from Candy's lover Kyle, her rival Jeri, and peripatetic murder suspect John/Peter, and the entire cycle of bizarre goings-on resumes, as corpses proliferate. The film is weakly directed and the playing is uninspired at best, the wooden Rusler only sporadically altering his expression of vague confusion in order to yell a bit, but one may well enjoy some interesting scoring from composer Daniel Licht, and design based production values are quite high for this budget deficient affair, but these are scant help against a hopelessly foolish screenplay that allows the greatest entertainment yield to come from the appearance of a body double for Valen in a shower sequence.
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